Go Away. I’ve Got Recipient’s Regret!

I spotted a tweet over the weekend from someone who had clearly reached the point of ‘Recipient’s Regret’.

Not come across this yet?
Oh trust me, I bet you may well have.

This is the point where you, as the once-willing recipient of a brand’s marketing dialogue, have now grown so flaming weary of their same-old same-old unimaginative distribution that the only thing for it is to….

UNSUBSCRIBE.

This is exactly what that particular tired and tetchy tweeter had done.

They’d had enough. And frankly, because I myself received the material from that brand until only two weeks ago when I too became peeved with the daily deluge, I completely understood why.

There’s a very quick lesson in this experience which is worth noting for anyone undertaking a new or refreshed approach to marketing-themed contact with their target customer.

It’s this: As with a relationship, just because someone decides to unite with you, they’ll just as easily leave if they feel you stop appreciating and respecting them.

Treat your newly acquired data of potential customers carefully, and always remember what it feels like to be a recipient as well as a distributor.

Here’s some tips:

How frequent is too frequent?
Just as it would be lovely to get a bunch of roses from a new beau, you’d probably grow a little tired of the lack of creativity if they were arriving every day for the next 365.

Respect your customer enough to know that they’re busy with many many things in their working and private day.

They subscribed to you because they thought your material might have worth….not because they want to have your name rammed down their throat in an obvious marketing tactic on a daily basis.

Revise and refresh.

You can offset the issues about frequency to some extent, by ensuring you are updating your content and keeping it relevant.

So long as you have something new and intriguing to say, there’s a purpose to your engagement and less reason for a consumer to be ‘turned off’.

A picture says a thousand words.

In marketing emails in particular, don’t forget that if you can illustrate your message with a picture, you’re far more likely to get positive engagement.

Ask them what they think.

Yes, possibly uncomfortable, but it helps to ask your audience what they think.

Better to regularly ask your customers what they think about your content and frequency, than have them turn cold, get annoyed, slate you on a media channel, and never return to you again!